


the wolves on the water

by youremyqueen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Comment Fic, Female Friendship, Gen, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Platonic Relationship, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-07-31
Packaged: 2017-11-11 02:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So, Rascal, what will it be today? Sword or axe?"</p><p>Written for the asoiaf kink meme, prompt was: <i>Arya growing up on the Iron Islands.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the wolves on the water

**Author's Note:**

> Just so it's clear, this is an AU where somehow or another, Balon's second rebellion happened a bit before AGoT and actually succeeded, and for some reason or another Arya was taken as a captive/ward for the Greyjoys. I REALIZE THAT NONE OF THAT MAKES SENSE. BARE WITH ME HERE. Also, apologies for the screwy timeline.

There's a series of loud, echoing booms on the wood of the door, and they stretch along the wall of her room, right past her mattress and the space where her head rests heavy on the pillow. "Up now, Tiny. Or you'll be late again," a voice calls, sharp and intrusive, and then disappears down the hallway with the fading bangs.

"I'm up!" Arya yells back, voice more shrill than she can help, as she swings herself out of bed. She gets no response. "I won't be late," she tries, raising her cry. He doesn't respond, probably doesn't even hear her - never does. She doesn't understand why they always send stupid, old pirates to wake her, instead of their servants - or thralls, she supposes they call them.

King Balon had always just said it was because she was a _'special guest.'_ Theon had been much plainer about it when he'd stopped briefly in port. _Hostage_ , he'd said. Arya hadn't disagreed.

She doesn't change her clothes - they don't require dresses of her here, and that's something she's thankful for. When her father rises up and crushes this rebellion, she'll let him know of that kindness, at least. When he rises up.

It'll be soon, she's sure.

Arya washes her face and hands quickly, then steals into the dining hall like a ghost, grabbing a buttered roll before scampering out again. Someone greets her, but all she can do is send a quick wave over her shoulder, gnawing at the bread as she runs. She doesn't understand the chorus of laughter that follows, nor the comments that are exchanged - _"Drowned God below, that's a familiar sight." - "Growing up just like her master-at-arms." - "Aye, just like her."_

She doesn't pay them any mind. Stupid, old pirates.

Arya's nearly done her breakfast when she arrives in the makeshift training yard. Pyke is just a mound of rocks and sand, and it's hard to find flat, open land to practice on - also, everything always smells like fish, even the castle - but they'd been managing alright.

Asha had at first insisted that Arya should learn to fight on the deck of a longship, should learn to maneuver her way around the ropes and poles and whatever else they have on those things. Arya had refused. She's a child of the North, and she's made for open land and forests and mountains and grass. Not boats. She'd said as much, and Asha had given her a look afterwards that was so strange and uncomfortable that Arya had for a moment been afraid that she'd be hit. She'd seen the men here beating the boys down when they didn't listen, and she'd been wincing for a blow that never came.

Asha's expression had cleared, quickly fading into raised eyebrows and a slight smirk. _"Suit yourself, you rascal,"_ she'd said, and had never brought it up again.

When she arrives, Asha is already there, slouched lazily against a rock, cleaning her nails with a knife that looks far too sharp for the job it's got. "You're late," she says, casually, barely glancing up.

"I'm not," Arya responds. " _I'm not._ Practice starts when the shadow reaches the edge of that tower," she points into the distance, waving her hand for Asha to look, but she doesn't glance away from her nails. "It's just there. I'm not late." She wouldn't try and argue with anyone else on this rock, like as not wouldn't try it if she were back at Winterfell with Ser Rodrick. But Asha is different. Asha almost seems to like it when Arya doesn't take her orders.

There's a short pause, and then Asha finishes and looks up. "Right," she says, tossing the knife and catching it quick as lighting, then slipping it back into the sheath at her breast. Arya has begged her time and again to teach her to do that, but Asha's always insisted that Arya will learn when she's ready, and no assertions that _she's ready now_ will change her mind. She dusts off her palms and goes to the leather satchel that rests by her feet, sorting through the weapons. "But if talk be true - and I'm inclined to think it is - then winter's on it's way in. And when winter comes - as I'm sure any Stark worth her salt would know - the days get shorter, and the light changes. The shadows change."

Arya's forehead scrunches up. She vaguely remembers Maester Luwin teaching her something to that effect, but she hadn't paid it any mind then, and she barely does now, just bites her lip, bouncing from foot to foot, as she watches Asha's hands glide across the steel. She's about to respond, but Asha gets there first, moving onto a new subject.

"So, Rascal, what will it be today? Sword or axe?"

She's been choosing axe lately, has gotten to like it fairly well, but all this talk of Starks has her mind changing today. "Sword," she says. Asha nods, like she'd expected that. But she always does that, whatever Arya chooses. She throws the small, specially-fashioned blade to Arya, who catches it one-handed, and Asha raises her own.

"Ready?" she asks, and jabs forward before Arya can answer. She always does that, too.

 

\---

 

After practice, they sit on the rocks, and Asha peels them Myrish oranges, flipping her knife every so often as she does, and Arya watches, entranced. "How do you know that?" she asks after a while. "About the shadows, I mean."

"My uncle told me," Asha responds, throwing her a few orange slices and sipping from her flask.

"What, the scary one?" Arya asks, disbelieving, thinking of the man who'd sailed into port last month for a short time. Asha's brow creases as she glances at Arya, before tossing her head back and laughing like she'd said something terribly funny.

"Trust me, Rascal," she tells Arya, taking another swig, "Victorian is not the scary one." She pauses. "And no, not him. My other uncle - my mother's brother."

"Your mother?" Arya asks, before she can stop herself, and it instantly takes her thoughts off the island and away to her own mother, wherever she is. Still in Winterfell, Arya thinks. Her father had gone to King's Landing, she'd heard, and only Sansa had journeyed with him. It's so stupid, she'd thought at the time, and still thinks, to go so far down south when Arya's stuck all the way up here. Asha gets this look on her face, though, a frown marring her usual easy expression, and then she shakes her head slightly, and doesn't respond to the question, just moves back to talking about her uncle, Arya thinks.

"He lives in Ten Towers," she says. "I'll take you to see him sometime or another. You might like him - he's not like other Ironborn, he likes books and things. He may remind you of the cushy, land-dwelling men you grew up with." It's a slightly scathing remark, but Asha says it with a teasing smile, and Arya, try as she might, has a hard time feeling terribly insulted.

She still has the instinctual desire to defend her fellow Northmen, though, and she doesn't quash it down. In front of King Balon, she might have, but not Asha, never Asha. "The men I grew up with were the fiercest warriors of the North," she says, biting down on the flesh of her orange with vehemence, for lack of anything better to do to express the importance of the statement.

"I never implied that they weren't," Asha replies with a smirk, but there's something baiting about it.

"You'll see. One day my father will retake the North with those men, and then come here for your father and all your uncles. Then you'll see how fierce they are." She's said the same before, nearly screamed it at everyone who'd looked twice at her in her first few weeks on Pyke. She doesn't say so half as much anymore, but she doesn't believe it any less.

"Will he?" Asha asks, but she doesn't really seem to want an answer. "And what do you think he'll do with me?"

That's the first time Asha's said something like that, the first time she'd done more than tease Arya for her declarations, but there's something oddly serious about the words when she says them. Arya just shrugs, looks away and chews her oranges. When she glances back, Asha's holding out the flask to her, like an offering.

Arya wrinkles her nose. "Gross."

Asha shrugs, and the smirk she gives is lazy, if a bit off. "Suit yourself."

 

\---

 

When Arya wakes up in the morning, near on a month later, there's been no knock on the door, nor the walls. No loud, smelly pirate disturbing her sleep. She blinks drowsily, eyes focusing on the form that slumps at the foot of her bed. Asha's sitting there, and she's not smirking.

Her voice is fairly flat when she speaks, and she doesn't bother with gentleness. "Your father is dead," she says.

Arya's not sure what the words mean at first, and it takes a while for them to sort out in her head, slipping around each other, lazy and thick with sleep, before they form themselves into a coherent thought. Her face crumples and her cheeks are wet, and she's thrown herself at Asha before she even realizes she's doing it.

"It wasn't us," Asha says, clear and steady into her hair, but Arya isn't listening, isn't thinking, just beats her fists mercilessly against Asha's breast, against the walls and the mattress and everything around her, but her vision is so blurred that she cannot see, and she doesn't even bother to wipe at her eyes. 

She doesn't think _who_ or _how_ or _when_ \- all that registers is _why?_

He's supposed to retake the North. He's supposed to come for her with a fleet behind him. He's supposed to take her home.

Asha is silent as she runs her fingers through Arya's hair, maybe slightly unsteady and unsure - and that seems so foreign, because Asha is always steady and _always_ sure - but she doesn't stop. Just holds Arya to her chest and keeps on running her fingers, and Arya can't stop thinking _why?_

 

\---

 

It's her nameday today, but Arya hasn't told anyone. She's ten and two, and she celebrates by packing a leather pouch with food and supplies, stealing into the armory for her favorite axe and sword both, and creeping, quiet as she can, out to the docks to find the smallest rowboat there is to take her out of here. She probably should have expected Asha to be sitting there, flipping her knife and looking bored and slightly amused, but she hadn't, and nearly drops her bag when she sees her.

"Weren't going to say goodbye, were you, Rascal?" is all she says, but it cuts deeper than any other accusations could have.

"I couldn't. You would have - I thought," she starts, sighs, thinks to try again but instead reaches down to wrap her hand around the handle of her axe. She really, _really_ doesn't want to have to do this, but she's not going to fool herself. She's leaving Pyke tonight, no matter what. "Are you going to turn me in?" she asks finally, slow and cautious.

Asha tosses her head back and laughs, actually _laughs_ , at that. "No," she tells her, like the possibility of such a thing is preposterous, and Arya's stance deflates immediately. "But there's no way I'm letting you go out in that." She nods at the little, wooden boat with its two small oars that Arya had been heading for. "You'll drown or be taken up by my father's men before the night is out."

Arya doesn't know what to say to that. Asha's probably right, but she hadn't had much of a choice, had she? It's that or stay on this stupid pile of rocks while the war rages on, while Robb marches south and Sansa is kept prisoner and Gods know what else. She _has_ to go. She has to go home. Her hand tightens on the axe again.

"Come," Asha nods back towards the castle, "Help me wake Qarl and a few of my men, and we'll see how far out to sea we can get you before someone is sent after us." She tosses her knife again, and this time her smile is nothing but pure mischief, and as serious as this is, as _important_ as this is, Arya can't help but give her the same smile back.

 

\---

 

They're approaching the shore of some fishing village when it hits her. Once they drop her, once she's off and gone and running through the trees and the forests, the mountains and the open northern land - she'll probably never see Asha again.

She wants to say goodbye, but instead, what comes out - as she watches Asha stand at the edge of the deck, flipping her knife - is, "Are you ever going to teach me how to do that?" She nods at the knife. "I'm ready, aren't I?"

Asha smiles crookedly at her, and it's true and unamused and foreign on her face. "You know how I learned?" Arya shakes her head. "I taught myself," she says, and tosses the knife over to Arya, who catches it clumsily. Asha's face returns to its usual smirk, and she gives Arya one last long look, before turning to her men, and calling for them to let Arya down onto the water in one of the smaller boats.

Qarl's the one to point out that they're not all that close to the land.

"Close enough," Asha says. And as they lower her and the increased supplies - not to mention coin - that she's been given down into water, she glances back at Asha's steady expression, and Arya agrees. _Close enough_.

 

\---

 

She hears about what Theon does to her home, to her brothers. She hears about Balon Greyjoy's death. She hears that Jon has been made Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. She hears about Sansa's marriage to Tyrion Lannister. She hears a lot of things.

She's actually _at_ the Red Wedding. Not soon enough, though. Not even close. As she runs for the doors and the Hound's axe swings at her head, the last thought that flashes through her mind before she goes down is, _What would Asha do?_

It doesn't actually help things at all, but it makes he feel slightly better.

 

\---

 

She hears a lot more in the following years, and stars in her own share of war stories, and she's five and ten before she sees Asha again. Stannis and that dragon lady are making some sort of pact at The Wall, under Jon's supervision, and all the representatives of the great houses are there. Arya is standing at Sansa's side, bored and fidgety, when she notices her. She's older, and stands taller, holding her turncloak brother by the arm, and when Arya catches her eye, she does that same smirk she'd always done.

Arya tracks her down after the ceremony, only to find Asha waiting for her in the training yard. The Wall is weeping today, as the cold winds die down and the days grow longer. Arya says nothing at first, just reaches down to the sheath at her hip and pulls out a knife, tossing it a few times in the air and catching it with ease, and Asha's reactionary smile lights an unquenchable spark of pride in her chest.

"You're good at that," Asha says, pushing up from where she slumps.

"I know," Arya responds, maybe too quickly.

There's a long pause, and then Asha nods at the armory behind, casually. "So," she says, "what's it going to be today? Sword or axe."

Arya can't help the spread of her lips. 

 

\---

 

She chooses axe, and they beat at each other mercilessly for a long while in the sun of early spring, ending with no clear winner, and slump there in the yard afterwards, sweating and laughing and trading tales from the last few years, bloody and brutal as their stories are. And, this time, when Asha offers her a sip from the flask, Arya takes it.


End file.
